Transfer of game to another PC

[JR77]

Dear forum,

I have recently become the host of a small PBEM with a couple of friends and have been hosting from my laptop due to travelling. Now I want to host from my desktop and both have the map, pretender, newest dom3 version, and CBM 1.5.

After copying the savedgames folder to the desktop, the game appears on the list, but when I select the game, there are no nations on the list. Please advise.

[JR77]

Anyone know if this is possible?

[lch]

It sounds like you didn't copy everything. You need the nations' .trn files for the host, and the .2h files for the player moves.

[Ballbarian]

It is possible. Instead of just moving the saved games folder, you might try copying the entire dominions folder over from your laptop. I wonder if you are experiencing some kind of version conflict.

[MaxWilson]

Dear forum,

I have recently become the host of a small PBEM with a couple of friends and have been hosting from my laptop due to travelling. Now I want to host from my desktop and both have the map, pretender, newest dom3 version, and CBM 1.5.

After copying the savedgames folder to the desktop, the game appears on the list, but when I select the game, there are no nations on the list. Please advise.

It sounds like you copied *only* the savedgames folder. You need to copy the whole dom3 folder to the desktop. Dom3 always looks for saved games relative to the executable, so if the game is installed at

c:\Users\Bob\Desktop\Dom3

it will look for saved games at

c:\Users\Bob\Desktop\Dom3\savedgames

and mods at

c:\Users\Bob\Desktop\Dom3\mods

-Max

[JR77]

Edit: Sounds like you perhaps misunderstood my post. I am not moving stuff to the /desktop folder, but from a laptop computer to a desktop (stationary) computer. They both run same versions of Dom3 and CBM.

Thanks for the info though :)

[MaxWilson]

Hmm, that's weird. You've got the ftherlnd file and the .trn files, right?

-Max

[Gandalf Parker]

Is it the same operating system on both machines?

[JR77]

Hmm, that's weird. You've got the ftherlnd file and the .trn files, right?

-Max

Yes, I have the entire /NameOfTheGame folder with .2h, .trn, and ftherlnd.

They are both running WinXP. Different languages though, one danish and the other english. The games are also installed to different partitions. The laptop has the default c:\... location and the desktop d:\games\dom3. I would not think any of that mattered though.

But what I understand from your comments is, that it should be possible, even as host of an mp game, to transfer a game from on pc to another?

Thanks,
JR

[MaxWilson]

I've never done it[1], and Gandalf's idea about the operating system may be spot on, but yes, I think it should be possible to transfer games between PCs. There are forum members who do that kind of thing regularly with SP games while travelling. I don't know about MP hosts, though--if it's play-by-email then obviously yes, if it's over IP then I don't know.

-Max

[1] Transferring a saved game between computers, that is. I believe I have transferred Dom3 as a whole but without keeping any saved games.

[Ballbarian]

JR77,
Have you tried simply copying the entire dominions3 folder from laptop to desktop. If not, then try that and run the dominions exe from the new folder. Dominions is beautifully self contained and does not rely on any clumsy registry entries. That may not be the problem, but it is certainly worth a try. I transferred my entire dominions install between winXP machines and to my Vista machine and it has ran without a glitch. I can't remember if there were any running server games at that time, but I suspect there was at least one. Can't remember for certain now.

[thejeff]

I have definitely transferred games between PCs. I picked up hosting of a game when the original host had to drop out. It worked fine.

There should be no issues. Nothing should require copying the actual executable and other files in the install directory. Obviously any mods & maps should be copied and the versions should be the same.

Permissions issue maybe? Make sure all files in the game directory are both readable and writable by the user running Dom3.

I can't really think of anything else. You could send them to someone else to see if they have the same issue.

[JR77]

Thank you all for the suggestions, I will try when I get home. I think the permission thing could be spot on. Otherwise I will try a complete copy.